Author: Antonio Dieguez
Date: 06:55:34 10/27/99
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On October 27, 1999 at 03:58:07, James Robertson wrote: >Nicolas, > >When I first started writing my chess program, I had never read any books, had >no internet connection, no nothing. I had no programming training, no people to >guide me; basically, all I had was the QBasic interpreter that came with MSDOS >and my own brain. So, my first program searched a tree of exactly W^D. > >After I wrote my program (it could search two plies in 3 minutes on my 486, and >'handled' captures by just extending a ply if the last move was a capture), I >found a book by (I think) Monty Newborn. It contained the first computer chess >stuff I ever read, and I remember sitting on my couch working out trees with a >pencil and paper for about three hours trying to figure out why the 'alpha-beta' >algorithm worked. Eventually, it did work, and my program searched 3 plies in >three minutes. :) I "discovered" and implemented the called alpha-beta before reading somewhere, and I feeled really exciting! I suposse some people wont can feel that way starting with a simple chess program already written or reading many ideas before start writing his program, with the exception obviusly he finally doesnt make just a simple chess program... >A few months later I bought myself a C++ compiler, and learned C++ from scratch. >Another while later my family got an internet connection and a whole new chess >world opened up, one that I have been thrilled with and wouldn't give up for >anything. > >The whole point of this is, I took a chess program step by step; I would >encourage you to do the same. Write a search algorithm (maybe not even >recursive; my first wasn't) that just searches W^D trees. If you can do it >without looking at anybody else's code, all the better. Chess programming is >like math; you have to 'do all the homework problems', and you're guaranteed a >good grade. Add the alpha-beta algorithm next. I added it to my QBasic program >before I had seen the source to any other program, so it was a completely >original implementation; while clumsy, it ensured I understood what was >happening completely. It took me days of work and about 50 emails to Tom >Kerrigan to figure out how a quiescence search works. But since I did take the >time to learn how it works, I can debug my code when something goes wrong. :) > >Good luck, and keep at it! Aren't you 15? I was 15 when I first started chess >programming. (2 years ago!! Man, time flies.) > >James
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